Here is one (please note the author):
G. Jeffrey MacDonald ascribes clergy burnout to “congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.” The real problem is the provider versus consumer mentality.
Ministry is not solely the work of professionally trained clergy. Rather it is a shared enterprise in which lay people are equal partners. Clergy burnout occurs because both parties lose sight of this fact. The result is clergy who believe that they must meet everyone’s needs while playing the role of a lone superhero, and members of the laity who are either infantilized or embittered because they cannot make meaningful contributions to their church.
Embracing a circular ministry model that values and uses the gifts of laity and clergy while sharing power and authority engages everyone in the work of reconciliation. The big questions are: Will the clergy be able to give up their ascribed power? And will the laity be able to step up to the challenge of their baptism?
Bonnie Anderson
New York, Aug. 9, 2010
Who among us could argue with that statement? Or be willing to
answer those two essential questions? If clergy attempt to carry this ministry alone then we will truly be alone. Christian ministry is about service and not about power. Did Jesus dominate people or
did he set them free from the Pharisees?
Robert Dedmon
Peoria, Illinois, August 17, 2010
The type of burnout she describes does happen, but it has nothing to do with the original article to which she responds.
The “higher calling” of which MacDonald wrote was specifically preaching – Anderson the “lone superhero” as a straw man argument. MacDonald was arguing for honest Biblical exposition, not clericalism. Good preachers are gratified, not exhausted, by lay people rising up to Christian work in response to the message.
[blockquote] Ministry is not solely the work of professionally trained clergy. Rather it is a shared enterprise in which lay people are equal partners.[/blockquote]
This is unsubstantiated and taken as axiomatic. The predominant Scriptural model for church is a flock of sheep and a shepherd. The sheep and the shepherd are not “equal partners.” The consumer mentality is precisely when the sheep think of themselves as “equal partners” and start demanding 8 minute sermons that “make us feel better about ourselves.”
The Episcopal denomination is toast with leaders like Ms Anderson.
Anderson ignores a great problem in contemporary ministry which is the tendency of congregations and congregational lay leaders to regard the minister as little more than a paid (and not very well at that) employee whose primary function is to submit to the leadership of often self-designated lay leadership. I’ve seen that more than I have seen infantilizing clergy.
Spot on, robroy.